Google's recent change in their secretive algorithm, intended to improve quality of search results, was met with muted response from the search industry. While some brands were negatively affected, others were not impacted at all. The net difference seems to be negligible.
But this move points to a larger issue. The quality of search results is deteriorating.
Recent incidents of gaming the search ecosytem, most notably by JCPenney and Overstock.com, amplifies this issue. Linking from .edu domains, as Overstock demonstrated, juices your quality score due to the presumed quality of these links. JCPenney's "black hat" tactics, which they continue to claim was the unilateral decision of their search agency, was only discovered through a very basic analysis from a third party. How could the crown jewel of Google's algorithm be so blatantly and easily compromised? What does all this suggest to the future of search marketing?
Search is poised to experience the largest overhaul in it's young life, moving from the minor and periodic algorithm changes that are meant to keep SEO spammers off balance. While these simple changes have modest and temporary success, SEO experts quickly adapt, recovering from short-term penalities. After a few weeks, they're back to new tactics that help their clients exploit the next gap in the algorithm. The cycle continues. Quality continues to decline while the vastness of the Internet expands. Search needs to respond. And it is.
Rather than the (frequent) maniacal focus on links to content to dictate relevance, new search algorithms will strongly consider how content is consumed and shared by people. And not just by anyone. But by people who you know, who you trust, who you interact with and who exert influence on your decisions. This, of course, is the world of social media. A world where more than 500 million people convene every day, spending 700 billion minutes sharing 50 billion pieces of content. And that's just Facebook. Add in other social portals like Twitter and LinkedIn and the audience metrics are staggering in their size and scope.
These large audiences are creating vast troves of data that will be harvested to help solve a problem that has been a shortcoming of the Internet since its' early days...understanding the context of the content? And this problem is getting bigger and more complex as the Internet expands, posing a threat and an opportunity to the Search industry
The Web's architecture, which does a great job of expressing how a page should appear, does little to explain the meaning of a page. This is left to humans to interpret because machines - like the vast arsenal of machines at Google's disposal - can only do so much to understand context and meaning.
This gap in using machines to understand meaning and relevance is magically filled by other people who influence you - in the parlance of Facebook, your Social Graph. Search engines who tap into this data will for the first time expose, share and connect pieces of data, information and knowledge in a way that's most relevant to individual needs and interests. Powerful stuff.
What does this all mean to marketers responsible for driving traffic, increasing brand visibility, improving conversion and increasing customer lifetime value? It's quite simple - adapt or perish. And adapt with urgency, bypassing incremental steps in favor of bold moves. Sure, the allure of fine tuning SEO has the possibility of dropping revenue to the bottom line. And, yes, the future of social-centric SEO remains a bet at this point. But marketers ignore this movement at their own peril. Action is required to define your strategy and execute.
As I've written often in past blogs, the need to aggressively build an audience of fans and followers remains an essential first step. And fortunately, there's many techniques that are proven to build this audience at scale. There's also a wide array of technology providers who are delivering platforms that manage all aspects of a brand's social presence. Platforms like Buddy Media and Involver have good core functionality that speeds time to market and gives multiple avenues to build and engage your social audience.
Fully embracing Open Graph (OG)...which essentially means enabling your content with Likes...is another critial step towards exposing your content to new and emerging search algorithms. Facebook has recently given marketers a new incentive to implement OG - "Likes" behave similar to "Shares", which is a much better consumer experience and gives brands more control over the content that appears in News Feeds.
Complementing both activities, activating OG and building likes and followers, is a sound advertising strategy using Facebook display ads and Twitter Promoted Tweets and Promoted Trends. These platforms are relatively immature but can drive value despite their limitations.
The looming question is this - how much time do we all have before social search becomes mainstream? Not as long as you think.
It's a virtual certainty that Facebook will solve social search. Too much money and opportunity for growth in Search to cede this to anyone else. They'll either do so through building their own capabilities, or, more likely, acquire a company like Blekko who is farthest along in social search. Twitter is also determined to pick up more of the search pie. Rather than syndicate their "firehose" of content to third parties, they'll have their own solution to real-time search.
So change is coming to Search. Responding to this change is not an option. How you respond and the urgency of your response will separate winners from also-rans.
